Tobacco Chemistry: 4: ChemicaI and Ciliotoxic Studies of Smoke from Freeze-Dried Tobacco

Freeze-dried and corresponding conventionally cured tobacco have been subjected to comparative studies. It is shown that the cigarettes manufactured from the freeze-dried tobacco have a noticeably lower average weight due to the higher filling capacity of this tobacco and that this has little or no influence on the taste, but affects the burning rate considerably. Determinations of the amounts of total particulate matter, dry condensate, and nicotine in the smoke shows that these are about half in the case of the freeze-dried material when an equal number of cigarettes are smoked; they differ much less when an equal amount of tobacco or an equal number of puffs are used as the bases for comparison. The "phenol" content of the smoke is however in all cases found to be noticeably lower for the freeze-dried cigarettes. Examination of the ciliotoxic effect of the smoke from the two types of tobacco on rabbit trachea in vitro shows that there is no significant difference between the number of puffs required to achieve complete ciliostasis. A detailed gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric study using a high resolution glass capillary column and computerised data-acquisition demonstrates that there are no significant differences between the gas phases of the smoke derived from the two differently treated tobaccos.